> Now that a few major old and new OSs are available for the PC > (e.g., dos, windows 8x, windows xt, linux, Os2, - -) I find myself > morning the choice of having to give up several wonderful tools > ported to operating system A, but not to OS B, etc.
Which tools, do you which you could run on which Operating System? > This got me wondering if it is possible to switch between different > OSs, as quickly and easily as one switches from one program or > task to another, using a windows desktop. > > As of now, switching to another OS usually involves a laborious and > relatively time consuming rebooting of the PC. I switch OS's a lot, and the process is neither laborious nor terrible time consuming, it takes under 2 minutes, and requires 3 simples steps, 1) reboot. 2) select an OS from LILO, and 3) log in. > The factors preventing fast OS switching that I can immediately > think of is: > > a) different file systems and binaries > b) different kernals in memory. > > There is not too much that can be done about a, but I wonder if > some kind of flash ROM could be included in a PC that contained > all the things that had to be in RAM for an OS shell to talk to > the PCs devices? If so, could not one simply and quickly dump, for > instance the contents of flash memory holding Linux, to your ram > and start using linux? The little bit I have learned in the past few weeks of studying assembly language has shown me that an OS places at least some of its various calls and functions at very specific memory addresses, and that the boot process makes these placements in a very precise and orderly cascade of steps. I don't think trying to execute the Linux kernel while running DOS or Windows, or even an already booted version of Linux would work... I think it would fail at the execution phase, as soon as it tried to call BIOS, and initiate the process. If you were somehow able to get around this obstacle, the Linux kernel would have to over-write memory addresses in use by the current OS, which would probably precipitate the mother of all crashes, in a matter of nanoseconds. Sounds like fun!<g> -wittig http://www.robertwittig.com/ When did ignorance become a point of view? To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
